Alex is failing as a father. Ian keeps dangerous secrets. Jenn is pining for adventure; Mitch is pining for Jenn. Four friends just scraping by, finding comfort in each other and the hope that things will get better. But as their twenties fade in the rearview mirror, none of them are turning out to be who—or where—they hoped.  In a time when CEOs steal millions while their employees watch savings dwindle, these four are tired of the honest approach. They’ve decided to stop waiting and start taking.  But a supposedly victimless crime has become a bloody nightmare. People have been killed. Ruthless men pursue them. Tensions they thought were long-extinguished are flaring. As their world unravels, each will have to choose between their life and the lives of others.   And for four people pushed to the ragged edge, the only thing more dangerous than the men chasing them might be their best friends.

The Amateurs

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Sakey, Marcus

Thrillers & Suspense

Brilliance Audio on Playaway

For over a century, opening the black box of embryonic development was the holy grail of biology. Evo Devo -- Evolutionary Developmental Biology -- is the new science that has finally cracked open the box. Within the pages of his rich and riveting book, Sean B. Carroll explains how we are discovering that complex life is ironically much simpler than anyone ever expected. Perhaps the most surprising finding of Evo Devo is the discovery that a small number of primitive genes led to the formation of fundamental organs and appendages "in all animal forms." The gene that causes humans to form arms and legs is the same gene that causes birds and insects to form wings, and fish to form fins; similarly, one ancient gene has led to the creation of eyes across the animal kingdom. Changes in the way this ancient tool kit of genes is used have created all the diversity that surrounds us. Sean Carroll is the ideal author to lead the curious on this intellectual adventure -- he is the acknowledged leader of the field, and his seminal discoveries have been featured in Time and The New York Times.

Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo and the Making of the Animal Kingdom

Science & Math

Carroll, Sean B.

Biological Sciences

Despite grim headlines about the economy, you don’t have to stay in a job you intensely hate. There’s a better opportunity waiting out there, and escaping from cubicle nation is easier than you think.  Pamela Slim spent a decade traveling all over the country as a self-employed trainer for large corporations. She was surprised to find that many of the most successful employees at these companies harbored secret dreams of breaking out to start their own businesses. They would pull her aside after a meeting and whisper, “I would love to work for myself, but have no idea how to get started. How did you do it?”  So Pamela started a blog – Escape from Cubicle Nation – to share her experience and advice. Soon, questions and stories poured in from corporate prisoners around the world. As her blog gained popularity, she also interviewed some of the brightest experts in entrepreneurship on topics from finance to branding to marketing via social networks. This audiobook includes Pamela’s very best material, based on thousands of conversations and reader submissions. It provides everything you’ll need to consider a major change – not just the nuts and bolts of starting a business, but a full discussion of the emotional issues involved. Pamela knows firsthand that leaving corporate life can be very scary, especially if you have a family and other obligations. Fears and self-defeating thoughts often hold people back from pursuing an extremely gratifying solo career.  Get ready to learn your real options, make an informed decision, and maybe, just maybe, escape from cubicle nation.

Escape from Cubicle Nation: From Corporate Prisoner to Thriving Entrepreneur

Business & Money

Slim, Pamela

Business Development & Entrepreneurship

Just 150 years ago, most of our world was an unexplored wilderness. Our sense of its age was vastly off the mark. And what we believed to be the history of our own species consisted of fantastic myths and fairy tales; fossils, known for millennia, were seen as the bones of dragons and other imagined creatures. How did we learn so much so quickly? Remarkable Creatures celebrates the pioneers who replaced our fancies with the even more remarkable real story of how our world evolved. Inspired by Humboldt, the first group we meet — Darwin, Wallace, and Bates — returned from their explorations with the makings of the theory of evolution. The second group undertook expeditions that produced some of the most spectacular finds in paleontology: Eugene Dubois uncovered Java Man, the first claimed missing link between apes and humans; Charles Walcott located pre-Cambrian life in the Grand Canyon and Cambrian life in the Burgess Shale; and Roy Chapman Andrews unearthed dinosaur eggs in the Gobi desert of Mongolia. The discovery of the kinship of dinosaurs and birds and the emergence of the “fishapod” formed more links in the evolutionary chain, as did the work of Louis and Mary Leakey, who for five decades searched for our deepest past in East Africa. The final section of the book moves into the laboratory and the future, following the trailblazers who discovered a time clock in our DNA and extracted ancient DNA from extinct species. Join Carroll and his cast of naturalists for a rousing voyage through the most dramatic adventures and important discoveries in two centuries of natural history.

Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origins of Species

History & Philosophy

A dream prompts a mother to remove her baby from his crib an hour before a chandelier falls. More than a dozen people are no-shows for choir practice for the first time ever at the moment their church explodes. Before his patients ever call to say they’re coming to the hospital, an ob-gyn gets a pain in his chest signaling they’re ready to deliver. Are these coincidences, or is something happening that we need to pay attention to? This is the question Dr. Larry Dossey asked himself during his first year of medical practice. He had never had any sense of knowing the future when he experienced a week of premonitions about patients, all of which came true. As a scientist and medical doctor he was taught that knowing the future wasn’t possible. He was scared to talk about his premonitions because if he dared believe anything he was experiencing was possible – that the future could be known before it happened – then his entire education and worldview would be turned on its head. But as suddenly as the premonitions started, they stopped: “It was as if the universe, having delivered a message,” writes Dossey in the introduction, “hung up the phone. It was now my job to make sense of...” More than an examination of case studies, The Power of Premonitions reveals the world of science and research that proves the human capacity for knowing the future. Experiments consistently show that human beings are as wired to know what’s coming next as we are to see, feel, hear, and think. Dossey uses cutting-edge science to prove the value of what has long been considered the provenance of mystic charlatans and to show listeners how they can cultivate their natural abilities. This is an audiobook for the skeptical mind, but it’s also for the believer’s heart – because its author possesses the rare gift of having both.

The Power of Premonitions: How Knowing the Future Can Shape Our Lives

Dossey M.D., Larry

Religion & Spirituality

For generations, the descendants of the powerful telepath known as the Rowan have used their various talents to help mankind - some are telepaths, others can teleport through space, others are empathic healers. The clan has grown powerful. They have led Earth to ally itself with the alien Mrdini, and together the two races have held back the predatory Hivers, a deadly insectoid species that kills all life it finds.Like all powerful families, the Rowan clan has also made enemies. There are those who say the treaties with the Mrdini gave away too much - especially, that the Mrdini get more than their fair share of new living space as habitable planets are discovered - that the Hivers should have been exterminated by now, and that far too much power is concentrated in one family.The clan has two goals to keep the peace: to help the Mrdini control population growth, so that newly discovered planets are distributed more evenly, and to put a final halt to Hiver advances. They are confident of success - if they can survive sabotage and assassination attempts aimed at destroying all they have worked for.

The Tower and the Hive (Rowan/Damia Series)

Science Fiction & Fantasy

McCaffrey,Anne

Fantasy

Once upon a time an Indian writer named Amitav Ghosh set out to find an Indian slave, name unknown, who some seven hundred years before had traveled to the Middle East. The journey took him to a small village in Egypt, where medieval customs coexist with twentieth-century desires and discontents. But even as Ghosh sought to re-create the life of his Indian predecessor, he found himself immersed in those of his modern Egyptian neighbors. Combining shrewd observations with painstaking historical research, Ghosh serves up skeptics and holy men, merchants and sorcerers. Some of these figures are real, some only imagined, but all emerge as vividly as the characters in a great novel. In an Antique Land is an inspired work that transcends genres as deftly as it does eras, weaving an entrancing and intoxicating spell.

In an Antique Land: History in the Guise of a Traveler's Tale

History

Ghosh, Amitav

Middle East

Judy Moody Set 1: Judy Moody (Book #1), Judy Moody Gets Famous (Book #2), Judy Moody Saves the World! (Book #3), Judy Moody Predicts the Future (Book #4)

Children's Books

MCDONALD, MEGAN

Literature & Fiction

The Fallen

Parker, T.Jefferson

Mystery

The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks

Teen & Young Adult

Lockhart, E.

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